


The Unexpected Lover

by enigmaticblue



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-30
Updated: 2010-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticblue/pseuds/enigmaticblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Challenge #4 at fics_for_fun. Buffy finds out that Dawn is dating Spike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unexpected Lover

Dawn felt the weight of the cool arm over her stomach, and she extricated herself carefully, not wanting to disturb him. He murmured sleepily but didn’t wake, and she padded to the window to check the weather. It looked like rain, although that wasn’t terribly unusual for an English fall.

Spike had shown up on her doorstep on a day much like this one, nearly a year before. It had been raining at the time, and he’d been soaked to the skin and very bedraggled. She’d taken one look at him and had known; he was supposed to be with her sister in Italy. The fact that he was in England did not bode well.

Her relationship with both of them gave Dawn some insight into what had happened even before he told her his side of the story. There had been a fight, with words spoken that couldn’t be taken back, and hurt caused that couldn’t be healed.

Perhaps if they had been any other two people, they might still have recovered, but each was so badly scarred that the balance had been tipped this time with these words. Neither had ever told her exactly what had transpired, but Dawn got the sense that it had been some small, stupid thing that had pulled the scabs off wounds each had believed long-healed.

It had been strange at first, to allow Spike to stay in her tiny apartment without letting Buffy know. When her sister had finally called to tell her that their relationship was over, Dawn had only admitted to seeing him, no more than that. The secret had been small and precious, and somehow thrilling. In spite of the distance between them, Dawn still had the younger sibling’s joy of fooling her big sister.

Not that being with Spike was wrong, not really. Not unless she stopped to think about the fact that she was sleeping with the man who had engaged in wild and wacky sexcapades with her sister. That put a different spin on things, but Dawn didn’t let herself go there very often.

And when she did, she generally thought that Buffy had been the idiot who let him go. It just went to show that she was the smarter Summers.

Buffy still didn’t know; at least, Dawn hadn’t told her. She had a feeling that Buffy suspected that something was going on, but it was one more thing that they didn’t talk about. Buffy hadn’t asked her if she was dating anybody for months now, and Dawn hadn’t brought it up the last time she’d visited.

Someday, the three of them would be forced to be in the same room at the same time, and awkward wouldn’t even begin to describe the situation. It was still months until Christmas, and Dawn was already wondering what she would do.

Should she leave Spike to spend the holidays with Buffy? Or stay with Spike and begin to establish their own traditions? Sometimes she thought her life had grown even more complicated since leaving Sunnydale; she hadn’t thought it possible.

Dawn wondered if it was necessarily a good thing for Spike to be her first lover. Maybe it was good that she had no one to compare him to, that she didn’t know what warm flesh would feel like against hers, that she had never felt a lover’s heart beating just out of synch with her own.

She’d had boyfriends before, of course. She’d gone as far as it was possible to go without actually doing the deed, but something had always held her back. At some point, she would have to explain who she was, and where she’d come from, and when she’d asked herself if this man could handle it, the answer had always been no.

Until Spike. It made a strange sort of sense.

The phone rang, and Dawn turned from the square of gray sky framed by the window. Spike’s pale hand emerged from the cocoon of blankets, and he answered in a sleepy voice.

Dawn swallowed, knowing without being told who was on the other end. This was the first time he’d answered the phone at her place without checking the caller I.D.

She read her sister’s name in his face, in his frozen expression and even colder eyes. It was always like this, and Dawn knew their last argument had really been a doozy.

He held the phone out to her wordlessly, and Dawn took the handset from him. Possible responses went through her mind as she waited for Buffy to say something.

Instead of launching into a lecture, or demands for information, her sister asked carefully how she’d been, and how Giles was.

Dawn answered her with equal care, meeting Spike’s eyes, now warm with humor. She knew they were both thinking about Buffy’s ability to retreat to the land of denial at a moment’s notice. She had never been quite so grateful for that skill.

They discussed her classes at the university, and Buffy’s social life; Dawn noted that the conversation didn’t touch on her friends, or what she’d been doing recently.

“I don’t think we’ll do Thanksgiving this year,” Buffy finally said, and Dawn knew they had reached the reason she’d called. “And I thought we could do Christmas in England.”

“Okay.” It was the best of both worlds, as far as Dawn was concerned, and she waited for Buffy to say something about not bringing Spike. “Are you going to stay with Giles?” She couldn’t ask her sister to stay with her, not unless she asked Spike to leave for the duration, and that seemed inherently unfair.

“Probably.”

There was a long, pregnant pause, and Dawn knew that one more wall had been erected between them. Buffy would not ask how it had begun; Dawn would not ask how it had ended.

But what was one more wall between them? Dawn often thought that they spoke from opposite sides of a labyrinth, and neither of them possessed the skill required to meet in the middle.

When Buffy ended the conversation, Dawn knew that her instinct had been right. Spike was one more thing they’d never talk about.

She handed the phone back to him and he put it back in its cradle. Dawn accepted his wordless invitation, climbing back under the covers. She could afford to miss one class.

They were both quiet, and Dawn knew that this silence was also filled with meaning, with things they would not say. This was Sunnydale’s last gift to her: her unexpected vampire lover, with all his attendant secrets.

Long fingers stroked her hair. “I’m sorry.”

Dawn didn’t ask what he was apologizing for—the newest rift between her and Buffy, his inability to explain what had happened, the baggage he brought with him. In the end, it didn’t really matter.

She placed a tender kiss on his bare shoulder. “I’m not.”


End file.
